(NYT54) HEUERSDORF, Germany -- July 26, 2004 -- GERMANY-MININGS -- St. Emmaus, a 700-year-old Protestantian miner's church in Heuersdorf, Germany in July. Visitors passing through Heuersdorf, a lonesome hamlet in the coal mining region of eastern Germany can hardly miss the American flag next to the tidy town square: it flies upside down. This is not a sign of disrespect, the friendly townsfolk insist, nor is it some kind of protest against the war in Iraq. It is a way of signaling distress -- something Heuersdorf has felt since 1994, when an American-owned mining company won approval from the German government to demolish this medieval village of 150 to get at the rich seam of coal that lies beneath it. (Matthias Rietschel/The New York Times)